Here With Me
by PeachDestroyer
Summary: Wherever he goes, she is there. Because some demons will never leave you. And even the dead can succumb to insanity.
1. Prologue

**I am telling you - this ship will be the end of me.**

 **The cover image is by dbgus1 on tumblr who makes amazing Undertaker/Cloudia drawings^^**

* * *

 **Prologue**

* * *

Every of his days was built on certain basics: getting up, eating breakfast, starting to work. His daily basics had been the same for many years now, but that didn't mean that he was bored, that he wished for a different, more adventurous or thrilling life.

After all, he greatly liked his work, and all the excitement he needed visited him in the form of a young boy and his black butler from time to time.

But even without those visits and forgetting the fact that he enjoyed his work, his life certainly wasn't boring.

"Aren't you excited that he will pay us a visit today? Of course, you are. You always are."

After all, _she_ was there.

She was sitting on his desk when he went downstairs to the parlour, her back facing him.

Sometimes, she was a child; sometimes, she was a young woman. But she was never an old one. After all, she had never lived to be older than thirty-six.

Today, she seemed to be around twenty.

"Say, Undertaker, don't you wonder if he will come with only his butler again, or if he will bring more people with him? He rarely comes in a group, but it would be so much more _fun_ if he did! Don't you think so?" She chuckled. "Of course, you do. After all, I know what goes on in that restless head of yours."

"Not even you can know what I think, Countess," he replied, and Countess Cloudia Phantomhive turned around to him, smirking.

She had been beautiful when she had been alive; she was beautiful still – and her beauty would never fade because, for her, time stood still.

"Of course, I can, Undertaker. I am only a fragment of your imagination – my thoughts are your thoughts."

Undertaker shook his head. "We've discussed that. You are a ghost, Countess."

"We both know very well that ghosts don't exist. Demons and Grim Reapers, yes, but not ghosts. It isn't very healthy to lie to yourself – and to talk to yourself. It doesn't matter if you imagine talking to _me_. After all, I have already established that I don't really exist, that the only place I do is inside your mind. You are talking to nobody else but you."

"You haven't established anything."

"Oh – really? Then, Undertaker, try to convince me, try to convince _yourself_ that all I've said is wrong. That you weren't thinking about the Earl's visit, that you weren't wishing for him to bring along more people – for him to socialise and live, and for him to let you be part of the life he builds.

"Convince yourself that I am not here because you still didn't get over my death and are desperately holding onto my memory because you are too weak to let go.

"Try it, Undertaker, but keep in mind that you have already failed the moment you made me say all these things to you."

Cloudia stood up and walked towards him. She raised her right hand to his face but didn't touch it.

"It is time to wake up, Cedric," she softly whispered, and Undertaker turned away.

And when he looked back again, she was gone.


	2. One

**One**

* * *

 **London, England, United Kingdom – November 1888**

* * *

"Welcome, Earl… Do you want to see how it feels to sleep in my custom-made coffin?"

"Oh – isn't there someone excited that he came with company?" Cloudia remarked from her place on one of the coffins displayed in the parlour. Today, she looked around twenty-five, and the look on her face told him that she greatly enjoyed it that she couldn't be seen by anyone else but him. Undertaker stepped out from the coffin in which he had been hiding and ignored her. After living with Cloudia for years, he still hadn't got used to her, but he had learned how to ignore her.

"I didn't come here to play today," the young Earl of Phantomhive told Undertaker who put a finger on his mouth to silence him.

"You don't need to tell me. I know why you came. With just one look, I can tell what's on your mind. Since the Earl went out of his way to visit me, I'll certainly do everything I can to help."

"Wonderful, Undertaker," Cloudia interjected, clapping. "A splendid portrayal of a mysterious and cunning man."

Undertaker had to resist the urge to glare at her.

"Oh, just do it," she said, amusement in her voice. "Just glare at a coffin on which nobody sits and on which nothing was placed. It won't make you any more insane than you are and people think you are."

"Please take a seat first, I'll go make tea," Undertaker told the Earl and his companions before he headed upstairs to his kitchen. Of course, Cloudia followed him. Wherever he went, she always followed him. Sometimes, he forgot that there had been a time when she hadn't haunted him.

"Just like you, because I am part of you, I am rather joyous that we have so many living guests!" Cloudia said while he put a kettle filled with water on the stove. "Three out of six people present – not counting the corpses waiting to be buried. When was the last time that the amount of the living and the dead was the same here?"

Undertaker opened and closed the doors of his cupboards to find the biscuits he had baked yesterday.

"A Grim Reaper just like you," Cloudia continued. "Fifty years have passed since the last time you met one of your kind – and now, one is down in the Funeral Parlour. Say, Undertaker, why do you think supernatural entities keep disguising themselves as butlers?"

Undertaker couldn't help himself but chuckle a bit. Just like when she was alive, it was impossible to ignore her for too long.

Cloudia shook her head. "Undertaker, it is not healthy to talk to yourself, to imagine dead people to be alive – and _to laugh at your own jokes_. Especially when you lie to yourself that someone else is telling the joke. Also, to remind you: You are scolding yourself right now."

He found his biscuits the same moment the kettle started to sing. Undertaker turned off the stove and put some tea leaves into a teapot.

"If you had decided back then not to adopt the disguise of a mortician but of a butler, your master wouldn't be able to take you with them when they wanted to go out because you would look too good in a butler attire," Cloudia said and, immediately, burst out laughing. To Undertaker, laughter, especially Cloudia's, was the most wonderful of sounds.

"I cannot believe that I, that _you_ , am, are thinking that!"

"Countess, please – I am trying to work here."

"It is not _my_ fault that you keep letting me talk. Besides, 'transfusing boiling water into a teapot' is hardly work."

"You are keeping _yourself_ talk," Undertaker replied and put the teapot, the jar with the biscuits, and some beakers on a tray. "Mrs Ghost Lady."

"I am _not_ a ghost, Mr Becoming-More-And-More-Senile Grim Reaper." She smiled at him all the way back downstairs. "Why didn't you take the _actual cups_ you have? You have enough."

"If my thoughts are your thoughts like you love to say – why can't you answer that question yourself?"

"Because you didn't allow me to."

He grinned. "And now?"

Cloudia rolled her eyes. "Now, you are thinking of cake – very helpful, Undertaker."

They reached the parlour, and Undertaker distributed the beakers and filled them with tea. Cloudia sit down next to the Earl.

"He looks a lot like Vincent," she said, inspecting him. "But the resemblance to his mother is much more striking. It is so terrible what happened to his right eye."

"You wanted to know about Jack the Ripper?" Undertaker asked the Earl, opening his biscuit jar. "Everyone's been scared because of this disturbance… But it isn't the first time I've handled this kind of thing."

"I bet my imaginary money, or, well, Undertaker's money, that the Butler Reaper knows more about this case than the Mortician Reaper. Also – 'Reaper' and ' _Ripper_ ' sound strangely alike. If Butler Reaper's name sounds like 'Jack,' it is rather clear who the culprit is." Cloudia sighed. "Undertaker – please, stop letting me say such silly things."

"Isn't this the first time? What do you mean?" the Earl's aunt, Madame Red, wanted to know.

"I've always thought it is rather amusing that the Earl looks more like Rachel than Rachel's own sister does," said Cloudia and put her hand over the Earl's. "My poor, poor, troubled soul."

"It's happened before, a case where prostitutes were killed. In fact, the way they were killed was very similar too," Undertaker said and offered the Earl his biscuits.

"Is he really related to the actual me?" Cloudia asked when she saw the Earl declining. "Even actual me's daughter Francis secretly loved your biscuits."

 _Perhaps, that demon of his is looking over his diet again_ , Undertaker thought.

"Right. The Earl would never miss a chance to have sweets if it wasn't for _that thing_." Cloudia turned around and glared at Sebastian. Undertaker smiled.

"But in the beginning, the police didn't think much of these cases. Though the murdered prostitutes all had something in common," Undertaker continued.

The Earl's widened a bit, and even the butler seemed to be genuinely interested. "Something in common? What is it?"

"Well now, I wonder that, I wonder what it is indeed. Is it bothering you?" Cloudia rolled her eyes at his words.

"I see, so that's how it is," said a Chinese man with a short name Undertaker never bothered to remember. "You're very good at doing business, Undertaker. How much money do you want for this information?"

"How much money?!" Undertaker snapped and jumped in front of him. " _I don't want any of the Queen's money!_ "

Cloudia sighed. "I know that you don't like the Queen – but wasn't that a bit too dramatic and aggressive even for your standards? At least, you admitted that yourself."

Undertaker turned to glare at Cloudia, but because no one but him could see her, it looked like he glared at the Earl who flinched at his gaze.

"Now, then, Earl," Undertaker said to cover his faux pas while Cloudia laughed hysterically next to the young boy. "I only have one requirement – show me a 'first-rate laugh.' If you do, no matter what you want to know, I'll tell you."

"Is that supposed to be a recurring family discount?" Cloudia asked. "You wanted the same thing from Vincent every time he came. Remember what you've said earlier? 'Since the Earl went out of his way to visit me, I'll certainly do everything I can to help.' You should have said 'I'll certainly do everything I can to help _as long as you make me laugh because, these days, all I do is laughing at my own silly jokes_.'"

 _I will really turn insane if you keep commenting everything._

He looked away so that he wouldn't see the sad expression on Cloudia's face.

* * *

Undertaker looked after the Earl and the others as they drove away in their carriage.

"Now that we are alone again, I want to tell you that I believe the real me would agree with you here: He should really come only to play."

He didn't turn around at the sound of her voice – he didn't want to see how the light from outside didn't shine through her.

"In this world, everyone has to mature so quickly – but Phantomhives have to grow up even faster," Cloudia said, her expression tearing at his heart. "But he is different from those before him – he is still a child."

"I know," Undertaker whispered, closing his eyes.

* * *

 **Cloudia is the commentator nobody needs.**


	3. Two

**Two**

* * *

 **Countryside, England, United Kingdom – December 1888**

* * *

She stepped next to him, her clothes and hair untouched by the wind. He didn't look at her, but from the corner of his eye, he could see that today, she was nothing more than a child.

 _Just like he was nothing more than a child; just like he is still nothing but a child._

"Darkness, my friend, always clung to us," Cloudia said. The wind was howling, but her voice still sounded clear through the air. "You knew that before you left, you got to know that better afterwards – and still, you stayed. You knew very well that something like that could always happen – that to us, 'happily ever afters' are even more improbable than to everyone else."

Undertaker didn't answer her – he just looked ahead, his eyes glassy and his mind both in turmoil and in rest.

"You didn't have to do what you did, Undertaker," she continued her song against the cold wind. "You could have stayed with them – but you have decided to stay with us. You are miserable because of the path you've chosen – do you sometimes wish not to have interfered? To have stayed and waited for all to end?"

"You know why I didn't."

"I do," she softly said. "But you could have returned – you could have at least tried. You can still do that – it's not too late."

"It is too late, Countess."

"This is a lie you are telling yourself, Undertaker."

For a while, they were both silent until Cloudia spoke again. "Darkness, adventures – they can be so tempting to a wandering soul. But what is the prize you have to pay for them? Many act without thinking. Many act from necessity. Entering is easy, but leaving isn't. Leaving something is the hardest you can do – because leaving means letting go. It means giving up one of the many paths from which you can choose. But it also means that you can step on a new one – and see where it will lead you." She gazed up at him, and from the corner of his eye, Undertaker saw that she looked like on that fateful day all those years ago which brought them together until they had been forcibly ripped apart.

"None of us was able to let go – we were both too weak to leave. That's why you are standing here. That's why you are talking to a memory of the real me inside your head, Undertaker."

Cloudia knelt down and reached out to touch the stone which he never forgot to clean. "It is his birthday and the anniversary, Undertaker. You should go and see our little Earl – your and the real me's little Earl – rather than standing here in the shadows. It is cold here; if you go inside, warmth will meet you."

"You know that I can't – his aunt and fiancée are here."

"And I know that you know that none of them would be displeased of your presence."

She stood up and turned to him, but he didn't turn to her. "Go to them, talk to them. Give him a present and make him laugh. Don't imagine me, don't talk to me. You are telling this to yourself, Cedric. Deep down, you know that you can be happy if you choose a different path. And still, you keep walking this one because you have walked it for so long now and you don't know if you can ever walk another. You don't know if you are now strong enough to let go. You are afraid – and what you are, I am too. I am afraid of what will come. We are all afraid, Cedric. It is not only you. It is not only them. It is okay to be afraid – and if you are together, you will see that all will be fine. You have already understood that – all you need to do now is to act and let go."

It started to snow when he collapsed to the ground, and when he spoke, the wind tore at his words and clothes.

"I can't. I couldn't let go of one. How can I let go of all of you?"

* * *

 **This was short (Sorry about that).**

 **Every time, I write sth like this I feel a little bit more stupid than usual because I think I'm a bit too young for things like this XD But, well, I think I will never stop writing about "finding and changing paths" and stuff. I am just too fond of this topic to stop XD**


End file.
